


How Rare and Beautiful

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - This World Inverted (Shadowhunters TV), Future Fic, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 07:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20671775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Footsteps creak in the living room, and Magnus bolts upright, adrenaline flooding through him. His disturbed wards sting across his skin. He can taste the burn of the magic that slipped through them in the back of his throat. It feels strangely familiar, and that’s even more concerning.Or: the Magnus of 'This World Inverted' gets a couple of unexpected late-night visitors, and maybe a different perspective.





	How Rare and Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Saturn by Sleeping at Last.

It’s a shiver of his wards that shakes Magnus out of a deep sleep, but it takes him a second to wake up enough to realize it, and several seconds longer to pull himself upright in bed. Alec has shifted to the other side of the mattress, face buried in the pillow and one arm slung absently over Magnus’s hip, and it’s very, very tempting to sink back down into the mattress, to curl into the warmth of his body and go back to sleep—

Footsteps creak in the living room, and Magnus bolts upright, adrenaline flooding through him. His disturbed wards sting across his skin. He can taste the burn of the magic that slipped through them in the back of his throat. It feels strangely familiar, and that’s even more concerning. He doesn’t have many enemies still living, and even fewer who could break through his passive wards, let alone the more active ones he built after Alec started spending most nights here.

Magnus slips quietly off the bed and across the room, pushes magic out through his palms, weaving the quick shell of another ward over the bedroom door before he moves toward the living room. There are two men there, silhouetted against the dim light coming in through the shades, and as he watches, the shorter of the two picks something up from the side table and makes a soft noise of surprise.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he murmurs. There’s something unnervingly familiar about his voice, but Magnus can’t put his finger on it. Before he can wonder about it much, the man twists suddenly toward him. Red magic flashes across his skin, an attack aura manifesting like a solar flare. “Who’s there?”

Belatedly, Magnus reaches for his own magic. It feels sharp across his skin, almost painful, but it comes easily enough, burning red as he lifts his hands to blast the intruders. Maybe in other circumstances he’d hesitate, but not with Alec here. He can’t risk giving them an opening.

The bolt of energy makes it halfway across the room before it splinters against a glowing shield, and the feedback bursts through his palms so hard that he almost stumbles. He braces his feet and pours more power into the spell, the magic flaring white along the edges with the strain, and still the stranger bats it away almost without effort. He feels himself shoved back another foot, feet skidding on the floor until his shoulders hit the wall, his eyes aching as his glamour peels away.

Magnus Bane was the favored son of a greater demon, and once upon a time he held the power to tear down armies at his feet. He hasn’t been that man in centuries, though, and it’s all he can do now to hold his ground. And even that is failing.

And then, abruptly, the figure on the far side of the room makes a sweeping gesture with both hands, and the flow of Magnus’s magic jerks sideways to smash into an ornamental lamp, sending it crashing to the floor with a noise that could wake the dead. Fortunately the wards on the bedroom door should keep Alec from hearing; the last thing Magnus wants is for him to wander out into the middle of this.

“I think that’s quite enough of that,” says that almost-familiar voice, and Magnus’s magic flickers and fades like a smothered fire. The man at the other side of the room steps forward, tailored coat flaring gracefully, red light coiling like molten lava around both hands. Yellow eyes glint in the darkness, and for an awful, gut-punched instant Magnus can’t breathe.

_Asmodeus_, he thinks, horror crawling up the back of his throat. There must be another portal open somewhere, because Asmodeus is here, his father is _here_ in his quiet living room, and Alec is sleeping in the bedroom behind him, shielded by a ward that might as well be made of eggshells for all the good it will do—

The man takes another step, the light from above the kitchen sink falling across his face, and Magnus rocks back on his heels, shock rolling through him.

It’s not Asmodeus. Yellow, slit-pupiled eyes stare at him out of features that are identical to the ones he sees in the mirror every morning. The man is wearing dramatic eyeliner and a neat goatee, his hair streaked with purple and elaborately styled, but he is still unmistakably, indisputably, _Magnus._

Magnus’s doppelganger banishes the magic from his hands with a graceful flick, tilts his head, and smiles. “Magnus Bane, I presume?” 

“What the hell,” Magnus says weakly, dropping his hands. His skin is stinging from the unaccustomed burn of battle magic. His ears are buzzing, and he’s pretty sure that doesn’t have anything to do with magic at all. “How…?”

“I do apologize for intruding,” the other Magnus says, holding his palms up. It’s not quite the harmless gesture it would be from anyone other than a warlock, but it’s not immediately threatening either. “I assure you it was unintentional, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to blast us through a wall again. Alright?”

“What…” Magnus trails off, uneasy understanding dawning. The Institute party, the one where he first met Alec. The one where a strange redheaded girl who called herself a shadowhunter dragged him back into a world he’d abandoned centuries ago “No. I destroyed the portal; you shouldn’t have been able to get through. _Nothing_ should be able to get through. And even if there was another one somewhere, we can’t both exist on the same plane.”

“I admit, we’re creating a bit of a paradox right now,” the other Magnus agrees, letting his hands drop. “Don’t worry. The portal is gone. This is just… consider it a glitch. We ought to be out of your hair in a little while.”

He opens his mouth, then realizes, “We?”

Right. There were two men there. He finally manages to tear his eyes away from his other self as a tall figure steps out of the shadows, and feels his heart stutter with shock for the second time tonight at the sight of the man’s face.

It’s Alec, coming up alongside that other Magnus, and his expression is so cold and wary that he looks like a stranger.

Of course, Magnus thinks blankly, as Alec moves into the light. A stele glints in a thigh holster and a bow is slung over his back. The jagged spike of a _deflect_ rune climbs the side of his throat, prickling with angelic power. He’s every inch a nephilim warrior.

He doesn’t just look like a stranger. He is one.

“How sure are you that we can trust him?” he says. His gaze is fixed on Magnus, but it’s clear that the question is directed at his counterpart. “He did just attack us. You.”

There’s a tense, balanced readiness in the way he holds himself that’s entirely at odds with Alec’s—with _his_ Alec’s insouciant lounging. He’s dressed ordinarily enough in dark jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt, but even so he might have stepped out of the middle of the kind of ichor-soaked battlefield that Magnus hasn’t seen in centuries and usually chooses to forget about. He looks like a soldier, like a ghost of bloody history standing here in the middle of Magnus’s quiet living room.

His Alexander is a closet nerd and a hopeless romantic who reads Magnus old love poetry in bed and brings him flowers on random occasions _just because, _a thin veneer of debonair charm over his sweetly goofy center. Not this stone-faced shadowhunter with a weapon on his back and a body built for war. The wrongness of it is almost nauseating.

This isn’t his Alexander. But it is _an_ Alexander. It’s a version of Alec from whatever nightmarish timeline shaped his own counterpart into a man who dresses and carries himself like Asmodeus and wields battle magic as easily as breathing.

He doesn’t know what his face is doing, but his other self glances between them and his expression softens in a way that makes his resemblance to his—_their—_father dissipate like smoke in a breeze. “Ah. It’s different here, isn’t it? Clary said as much. I wasn’t sure how much I believed.”

“Magnus,” says the other Alec warningly.

“We can trust him, Alexander,” his counterpart says. He seems unaffected by the banked violence simmering off of the shadowhunter. “He is, after all, _me._ And we’re the ones who invaded his apartment.”

“You did,” Magnus says. He means it to come out sharp, but it’s kind of thin and strained instead. “And I don’t mean to sound unwelcoming, but I really hope this isn’t going to be an extended visit.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. We’re currently creating an interdimensional paradox just by being here, after all; if all goes well, the pressure should pop us back to where we belong in no time.”

Alec—the shadowhunter with Alec’s face—glances at him and arches one skeptical brow. The expression makes him look startlingly human all of a sudden. Unsettlingly like Magnus’s own Alec when he’s in a mood. “What if all doesn’t go well?”

“One set of alternates will subsume the other,” Magnus says out loud before his counterpart can respond. There’s a curl of horror in his chest, and it’s not for himself but for Alec, _his_ Alec, sleeping sweetly in the bedroom of this apartment that they share in all but name. The idea of losing him to this battle-hardened doppelganger is unthinkable, and he very much wishes that he could stop thinking it. “Right?”

“It’s not a well-studied field of magic, for obvious reasons,” his counterpart says evasively, which is as good as a _yes._ Alec seems to be able to tell that too, from his glare. Magnus wonders how well they know each other. Given what he remembers about shadowhunter culture it seems pretty damn unlikely that they’re lovers, but there’s an easy comfort in the way they orient themselves to one another even without touching that speaks of long familiarity. 

“_Magnus_.”

“Fine. It’s possible. But it isn’t likely, and if it starts to happen, we can resist it. There are other options I can try if that’s the case, but they’re dangerous and I’d rather not risk them unless there appears to be a need. It’s a lot more likely that we’ll just vanish without having to do anything at all. Especially with the others working on it from our side. Alright?”

“No,” Alec says dryly. “But I trust you, you know that. How long will it take?”

“Unclear,” the other Magnus says, and makes an apologetic face in Magnus’s direction. “I’m sorry. We can wait outside. I really didn’t plan to crash us both into your apartment in the middle of the night. We were trying to—well, it’s a very long story that we don’t need to get into right now, and it isn’t your problem.”

“It’s fine, you can stay,” Magnus says, without entirely meaning to say it. There’s a part of him that wants nothing more than to kick the pair of them out and crawl back into bed with _his_ Alec, to wrap the room and both their bodies in a cocoon of magic so that nothing, not even these strange twins of themselves, can get through, but—

Well. At the end of the day, he is still Magnus Bane.

“Really,” his counterpart says, thoughtfully. Alec is turning slowly on his heel, scanning the dim apartment with eyes that look more warily assessing than curious. As if he’s expecting a Shax demon or six to burst out from underneath the coffee table at any minute. For all Magnus knows, that might be a perfectly reasonable concern in the hellish timeline where he lives.

“Yes, really,” he says, and deliberately turns his back on them to head into the kitchen. “Drink? I don’t imagine that alcohol would be a good idea right now, but I have a very nice batch of Fuzhou jasmine tea that I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.”

There’s a sudden breath of laughter that’s so much like his Alexander’s that he feels his shoulders twitch involuntarily. “He really is you, isn’t he?”

“In a sense,” says his counterpart, a sort of verbal shrug in his voice. A certain wistfulness. “Without knowing where the timelines diverged, it’s hard to say for sure, but I expect we share some early experiences and then were… shaped by the worlds we lived in. Each of us in our own way.”

“Ah,” Alec says, his tone soft and loaded. Magnus glances back in time to see him settle a comforting palm on the back of his counterpart’s neck, thumb brushing the short hair at his nape. Silver glints on his finger: a wedding ring. Magnus glances down almost automatically, and finds that he isn’t even that surprised to see its mate on his counterpart’s hand.

Not just lovers. They’re married.

Maybe the Clave has changed; it’s been centuries, and the rest of the world has moved on from at least part of that brutal prejudice. Maybe shadowhunter society has finally caught up.

Or maybe not. He’s well-acquainted with his own Alexander’s stubborn tenacity when it comes to things he really wants; it’s what got him to agree to that first coffee date after centuries of avoiding romantic entanglements of any kind. It stands to reason that this other version would have that same quality. Enough to defy the Clave for love of a warlock, though? It’s almost unimaginable.

It’s also none of his business. He busies himself with the tea supplies, setting the water to boil and carefully measuring out the leaves; he could do it with magic, of course, but he’s become accustomed to this quiet little ritual, and it steadies him a bit.

He sets the tea out in a delicate set of cups that Alexander bought for him for his last birthday—the date Magnus had invented on the spot the first time he idly asked about it—and they settle onto the high stools at the kitchen bar. His counterpart swirls the surface of his perfectly steeped tea with an idle twist of magic and says, “So, will we be inviting the _other_ Alexander to this little get-together?”

Magnus’s heart thumps sharply in his chest, but before he can open his mouth to protest or deny or—something—Alec says, sounding baffled, “What?”

“He’s sleeping right over there,” his counterpart says, tilting his chin at the bedroom door, which still flickers with blue magic. Magnus hadn’t even realized that it was manifesting visibly, damn it. “That’s a beautiful shield for someone as out of practice as you seem to be, by the way.”

Magnus flinches a little with the echo of his earlier panic. “I was motivated.”

“Of course,” the other Magnus says. It’s gentle. He’s still smiling, though, teasing and sly. “It doesn’t matter in any case. I would recognize those adorable snores anywhere.”

“What?” Alec says. He tilts his head as if to listen, then turns back with an expression that’s almost comically offended. It makes him look actually _young_ for the first time, and Magnus thinks distractedly that dimensional rifts being what they are, he must be the same exact age, down to the minute, as the Alec of this timeline. Twenty-four and a few months. This is the first time he’s looked it. “I don’t sound like that.”

“Oh, but you do,” the other Magnus says, and it’s a real grin on his face now. “At any rate. Now that you know we’re not here to murder the two of you, you could wake him up. I’m sure Alec would be as interested as I am to meet his alternate self. And it does seem a little rude to keep him in the dark.”

The mildly disturbed look on Alec’s face gives lie to that, but it’s not why Magnus shakes his head. “No.”

His counterpart tilts his head thoughtfully. “No?”

He sighs. Either the Clave has drastically reconsidered its attitudes on any number of subjects, something he’s never known nephilim to do, or these two men have, quite literally, fought the world to be at each other’s sides. He can’t imagine the kind of courage that must have taken, and it makes him feel like the worst kind of coward. “He doesn’t know. About—me. This. Any of it. I don’t think this is the best way for him to find out.”

“I see.” 

His counterpart brings his cup to his lips and doesn’t say anything else. It’s Alec who asks, abruptly, “Why not?”

“What?”

“Why haven’t you told him? I mean, you’re together, right? He’s sleeping here, so it must be serious. Why not tell him the truth?”

There’s a part of Magnus—the one that’s entirely too practiced at deflecting uncomfortable questions—that wants to laugh and challenge this stiff-necked boy’s completely accurate assumption that Alec’s presence in his bed means anything at all about the seriousness of their relationship. He shakes his head instead. “It’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”

“Alexander,” his counterpart says quietly. His voice is soft, but Alec closes his eyes for a moment, then nods, as if accepting a silent rebuke.

“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

It’s an unexpected echo of his own previous thoughts. Magnus turns his own cup in his hands, then sets it down with a soft clink. He doesn’t look up; he doesn’t think he can bring himself to look at that face right now, so like and so unlike that of the man he loves. 

“I suppose I’m afraid of how he’ll react,” he says eventually, quietly. He doesn’t actually know why he’s trying to put this into words now, other than the fact that both of them will be out of his life for good in short order. A practice run, maybe. In case he ever gets the courage to do it for real. “Things are good between us. I don’t want to ruin that. And it’s not as if there’s precedent for this sort of thing; barely anyone other than warlocks even remembers that magic exists. And most of us have faded away.” He lifts one shoulder. “As I was, before your little redheaded friend stumbled into my dimension and upended my life a few years ago.”

“Clary,” Alec says. It’s soft, dry, reluctantly fond. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”

“I owe her a debt, honestly. But it does complicate things, having my magic back. I’ve been living as a mundane for centuries. Reinventing myself every few decades. It doesn’t leave much room for… for permanence.” He looks down into the depths of his tea, the faint steam rising up. “Or honesty.”

“Do you love him?” Alec asks quietly.

Magnus breathes in sharply. “Of course I do.”

“Of course you do,” his counterpart echoes quietly. He lets out a breath, then says, “I was wondering what it was about this place that drew us. It’s—safe. And familiar.”

Alec rubs one finger over his wedding ring absently. “Magnus?”

“I’m sorry, Alexander,” his counterpart says. He makes a soft sound like a laugh, then adds, “It seems there were… not many versions of history where we ended up both safe and together.”

There’s something strange and sad in his face, but it softens when Alec reaches for his hand and squeezes briefly. “I’m not surprised. Are you?”

“No,” his counterpart says, then looks up to meet Magnus’s eyes. “I suppose we were just lucky. Both versions of us.” 

He pauses. For a moment, it looks as though he might mean to say something else, and then something crackles at the edge of Magnus’s hearing, a sudden breeze sifting through the air. It brings the smell of brimstone and hot metal, and his counterpart grimaces, pushing out his chair to stand. Alec stands as well.

“Ah,” his counterpart says. “And on that note, I think that’s our ride. It seems that your parabatai has come through for us after all.”

_Parabatai?_ Magnus thinks, startled, but he doesn’t have time to ask before the air behind them starts to crackle and split, a dark rift opening up in the middle of his living room. Beyond it he can see a flash of city streets, a New York that looks like an alien dream.

“Yeah,” Alec says, then turns back toward Magnus, digging briefly in his pocket before coming up with something small and glowing. A witchlight, Magnus realizes. It’s been centuries since he’s seen one.

“Alec?” his counterpart says. “We should—”

“Yeah,” Alec says. He spins the witchlight deftly between his fingertips for a moment, then tosses it to Magnus, who catches it automatically. It goes dark the moment it lands in his palm. A faint smile softens Alec’s face when Magnus looks at him. “It might help break the ice. If you ever do decide to tell him. I think—” He lifts one shoulder and looks at Magnus’s doppelganger. At his husband. “I don’t know what I’m like here, but I can’t imagine there’s any version of me that would let him go.”

Before Magnus can think of a way to respond to that, he’s turning back toward the portal, linking hands with his counterpart as they step forward into that shifting blackness. A moment later, they’re gone and so is the portal, leaving Magnus standing alone in his dining room.

He takes a deep, shaky breath, then lets it out, then banishes the crackling blue ward over the bedroom door and goes into the living room to drop onto the couch, witchlight in hand. He’s still sitting there some time later when he hears the bedroom door creak open, soft footsteps on the floor.

“Magnus?” Alec yawns as he comes into the room, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eyes. He’s shirtless and barefoot, adorably disheveled.

“In here,” Magnus calls softly, and shifts over to make room on the couch. Alec smiles, curling gracefully into his side and making a contented noise when Magnus loops an arm around his shoulders absently. “What do you have there?”

Magnus looks up at him, his bare throat and softly sleepy smile, the smell of his aftershave and his manicured nails, the gentleness of him so very different than that battered, wary soldier who just vanished back to a world so much less kind than this. An ache in his chest flares sharply, then dissipates.

He loves this beautiful man so very much. And if that other Alec and Magnus could fight their way to each other through all the horrors of their world, maybe he can manage this much courage at least.

Maybe he can offer Alec all of himself, and trust him to stay.

“Here,” he says, holding out the witchlight. Alec plucks it out of his palm, and it flares to light immediately at the touch of his skin, illuminating his handsome face from below, his sudden startled smile.

Nephilim blood holds true, apparently. Even here.

“Huh, cool,” he says, quietly delighted and nothing at all like any shadowhunter Magnus has ever met. “What is it?”

“It’s called a witchlight,” Magnus says, and pauses to take a shaky breath. He doesn’t feel unsteady at all, though, as Alec looks up at his face. 

“What is it? Magnus, is something wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” Magnus says, reaching for his free hand. Alec takes it immediately, curling warm fingers around his, and he feels suddenly very sure. Terrified, but very sure. He clears his throat and meets Alec’s eyes. “It’s just... there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”


End file.
